Admin identifies 15 as land mafia, directs for FIRs against them

Based on reports submitted by the Uttar Pradesh special task force (STF), a high-level committee headed by the district magistrate identified 15 persons in Gautam Budh Nagar as land mafia on Tuesday and directed revenue officials to lodge FIRs against them at police stations concerned. The anti-land mafia task force, in its report, has mentioned that these people have allegedly encroached or grabbed 25.257 hectares of land in different areas of the district.

District magistrate Suhas LY said that the names of these mafias will soon be uploaded on the ‘Anti-Bhoo Mafia’ (anti-land mafia) portal, which was set up by the chief minister in 2017 to identify people and companies that illegally acquire land. “These criminals have either sold out government or private land belonging to some other persons, or they have carved out colonies and sold it to unaware persons,” he said.

He added that most of them are accused in a number of cases related to non-cognizable offences. “While the Gangsters’ Act is already lodged against Kavindra Bhati, Mukesh Kumar, Omi (single name) and Dheeraj (single name), all of whom are members of the notorious Sunder Bhati gang operating in the district, Shailesh Kumar is the main accused in five criminal cases registered at Ecotech police station,” he said.

Suhas further said that very soon, more unauthorised properties of land mafias in the district will be pulled down. “While some of them have been found to have made unauthorised constructions in flood plain areas, a few of them have even encroached upon public and government land. The structures erected by these culprits will soon be demolished. In the next meeting in this connection, the action taken report will be analysed. Revenue officials of the areas concerned have been asked to inform the matter to their respective police stations,” he said.